and fixed his gaze with a hopeless fascination on a letter which
she somewhat portentously carried under the shawl, and which seemed
already to have yellowed in its arctic shade.

"Mr. Carstone has written to me that you would call," said Mrs.
Brooks with languid formality. "Mr. Carstone was a valued friend
of my late husband, and I suppose has told you the circumstances--
the only circumstances--which admit of my entertaining his
proposition of taking anybody, even temporarily, under my roof.
The absence of my dear son for six months at Portland, Oregon,
enables me to place his room at the disposal of Mr. Carstone's
young protege, who, Mr. Carstone tells me, and I have every reason
to believe, is, if perhaps not so seriously inclined nor yet a
church communicant, still of a character and reputation not
unworthy to follow my dear Tappington in our little family circle
as he has at his desk in the bank."

The sensitive Bly, struggling painfully out of an abstraction as to
how he was ever to offer the weekly rent of his lodgings to such a
remote and respectable person, and also somewhat embarrassed at
being appealed to in the third person, here started and bowed.

"The name of Bly is not unfamiliar to me," continued Mrs. Brooks,
pointing to a chair and sinking resignedly into another, where her
baleful shawl at once assumed the appearance of a dust-cover; "some
of my dearest friends were intimate with the Blys of Philadelphia.
They were a branch of the Maryland Blys of the eastern shore, of
whom my Uncle James married. Perhaps you are distantly related?"

Mrs. Brooks was perfectly aware that her visitor was of unknown